Morning journal and courier., 1887-11-10
CRANRERRIES.
HOW Turkey Sauce is Grown In New
Jersey Boys.

HOW Turkey sauce is Grown In New
Jersey Bogs.
| From the New York Mail and Express.]
A cranberry marsh of the present day is
| as handsome plat of green things grow
ing as the eye could rest upon, says a New
York Mail writer, but the rearing of the
bushes on new bog to the age of fruit
bearing is attended with no end of care
and toll, to say nothing of the expense.
Since the cultivation of cranberries as
sumed the proportions of a large and inn
portant agricultural pursuit in New Jer-
sey, three enemies, not one of which as
sailed the bush in its wild state, have
arisen up against it-a grass, a bulirush
and an insect. After a new marsh or
swamp has been cleared, ditched and
sanded, it is planted by taking cuttings
or slips from old bushes and inserting
one end of them in the layer of sand, on
the peat soil, which is pushed closely
about the slips. Cranberry slips soon
take root in the generous peat, and begin
to grow almost Immediately. They spread
rapidly over the marsh, but before they
have reached out their branches many
and choked by the sharp-edged, stiff
leaved, three square grass, and its inevi-
table coadjutor the hardy and persistent
bullrusb. The grass and the rushes must
be removed root and branch, for which
purpose curious gouges and peculiar hoes
and other implements have been devised.
These pestiferous weeds must be constant
" watched, and uprooted every week or
SO for two seasons, SO thoroughly -impreg-
mated does the soil seem to be with their
germs and SO rapidly do they develop. At
the end of the second year the cranberry
bushes have obtained such strength and
headWay that they cover the ground all
over the bog like an immense velvety mat
of emerald, and have ehoked the enter
prising grass and rushes out of existence.
It is estimated that to foster a cranberry
bog to this stage of its existence costs the
owner $100 an acre. If man should
want to buy 2-year-old bog, thrifty and
in perfect condition, he would be lucky if
he could obtain it for less than 5000 an
acre.
Cranberry bushes blossom at the begin
ming of the third season, and from that
time on the grower may expect visit
from the web worm, the most dreaded en-
eny of the bog. A singular characteristic
of this insect is that it never gives warning
of its coming on a marsh. The cranberry
grower may go to bed at night without
having been able to discover a sign of a
web worm on his bushes, and get up next
morning to see the marsh look as if it
were covered with miniature banks of fog,
and the tops Of the bushes drawn together
SO tightly that twine tied around them
could hardly make them any closer. The
light banks of fog are the webs of the
worm, which have been constructed dur
ing the night, and are what pull the tops
of the vines together. In day or SO the
vines turn yellow, the blossoms drop to
the ground, and the owner of that marsh
does no9 make any very large calculations on
profits that year. About the 1st of Novem-
Der they are submerged under FIVE or six
feet of water with which the bogs are arti-
fcially flooded. This water is drawn off
about the middle of May, and the bushes
come to view as fresh and green as a June
clover field.